coding, cake and travelhttps://daphnechong.com
Fri, 21 Jul 2017 21:22:00 +0000enhourly1http://wordpress.com/https://s2.wp.com/i/buttonw-com.pngcoding, cake and travelhttps://daphnechong.com
Diversity at NDC Londonhttps://daphnechong.com/2016/11/13/diversity-at-ndc-london/
https://daphnechong.com/2016/11/13/diversity-at-ndc-london/#respondSun, 13 Nov 2016 19:31:21 +0000http://daphnechong.com/?p=1778Continue reading Diversity at NDC London]]>Jakob Bradford, Jon Skeet, Chris O’Dell and I have exchanged a number of emails, Google Hangouts, and suggestions in the past few months that could be used to improve diversity at NDC conferences. I was a speaker at NDC Sydney, and it was one of the most heavily gender skewed events I had attended in years.

Ultimately, NDC London 2017 ended up at 23% female speakers. That’s a great result compared to the gender diversity numbers at the Sydney NDC conference. I am keen to see if the attendee ratio changes as a result. NDC have also promised a blog post on the history of their diversity numbers, and what their plans are for the future to continue to improve.

For other reasons, I’m not involved with NDC any more, but I wanted to say congrats to the London committee, and especially to Chris O’Dell, my ex 7digital colleague and friend, who helped to shape that agenda. She’ll be speaking on How to get your submission accepted at NDC London.

]]>https://daphnechong.com/2016/11/13/diversity-at-ndc-london/feed/0daphnechongNDC Sydneyhttps://daphnechong.com/2016/09/09/ndc-sydney/
https://daphnechong.com/2016/09/09/ndc-sydney/#commentsFri, 09 Sep 2016 05:32:19 +0000http://daphnechong.com/?p=1434Continue reading NDC Sydney]]>NDC Sydney wrapped up last month, and because it happened between a bunch of other things (preparing for our move to Seattle, recording the podcast with Scott Hanselman, a conference call with Jon Skeet & Jakob Bradford – post coming soon!), I hadn’t take the time to digest it all.

My talk

First, my talk – Video Transcoding at Scale for ABC iview. It was the last rendition of this talk I’d be giving, especially since I’ve already left the ABC. I’m glad I got the chance to present it one last time. I’ve written about my general experience with public speaking, and lessons learned. Here are the slides:

Other talks

A lot of the content at NDC was quite Microsoft heavy (not surprising), however I really enjoyed some alternative talks that weren’t about MS tech.

Lynn Langit’s session on Teaching Kids Programming was a highlight! Having done a lot of work writing tutorials before, and running sessions for people to learn, I understand how much work has been put in to produce the course materials. It was so inspiring hearing what the kids can do, and seeing some examples.

Lars Klint’s talk on Mastering Your Inner Developer was a really personal story. Judging by twitter traffic, a lot of people really loved the session.

Tess Ferrandez’s a Developer’s Guide to the UX Galaxy was also really interesting. What are the tenets of design that we should be aware of, and what happens when they go wrong? She walked us through Microsoft’s 12 UX guidelines. Unfortunately I can’t find a link to the cards she was using, but it was a great checklist.

Niall Merrigan’s session on black hat tools was eye opening. I learned that all devices on the internet can be scanned in 2m30s if you have enough machines to do it. So, don’t rely on security through obscurity.

I met some pretty awesome people, and got selfies

Jon Skeet – note the #HeForShe shirt! I love, love, loved that he publicly called out for better diversity.

Diversity

As I mentioned above, Jon Skeet publicly issued a challenge to improve diversity, both with a #HeForShe shirt, and a mention at the beginning of both his talks. It was my favourite moment of the conference. ❤

Subsequent discussions led to a conference call with Jon and Jakob Bradford (one of the NDC organisers) to discuss strategies to increase diversity at future events. More on that in a separate post shortly.

Organisation & Social events

The most challenging aspect is seven speaker tracks, which makes it difficult to pick which session you go to. (And as a speaker, knowing you’re up against 6 other people!)

Having said that, NDC is very well organised. Some really big name speakers, there’s plenty of space in the agenda to mingle, professional AV and video recording, and the social events – a boat cruise, drinks, and lightning talk PubConf – are well catered. Love the conference swag too – a black hoodie that I’m actually using!

Looking forward to next time, and keen to see next year’s speaker lineups!

]]>https://daphnechong.com/2016/09/09/ndc-sydney/feed/1daphnechongMy podcast with Scott Hanselmanhttps://daphnechong.com/2016/09/05/my-podcast-with-scott-hanselman/
https://daphnechong.com/2016/09/05/my-podcast-with-scott-hanselman/#commentsSun, 04 Sep 2016 17:57:03 +0000http://daphnechong.com/?p=1446Continue reading My podcast with Scott Hanselman]]>Yes, that’s right – I recorded a podcast with Scott Hanselman There’s a story behind it too…

I bumped into Scott at NDC Sydney. It was the evening before the main conference started, and we were both helping out with the Kids Code Club. We started chatting about what I was presenting on Thursday – video transcoding systems, cloud services, various price points, why our new system was worth building.

Scott: “Hey, would you like to do a podcast? It’s just a really casual chat, just like this.”Me: “Sure! Sounds good.”

Just to make sure I was prepared, I wrote some notes about video transcoding, AWS services, and reviewed bits we’d built in our system. A couple of weeks later, we caught up via Skype:

Scott: “Great, thanks for doing this! It’s usually best to talk about something you’re really passionate about. What would that be?”Me: “Um…” thinking: video transcoding is pretty awesome, but it’s not my #1 super-fun-happy-thing. But now I have to come up with thirty minutes of content I haven’t prepared…

I’m not really good at impromptu. That’s why formats like my blog (where I can draft things), and public talks (where I can prepare), work okay for me. So doing a thirty minute discussion flying blind was a terrifying prospect.

However, Scott was really, really supportive. After some back and forth, we came up with a blend of topics that include continuous learning, becoming more social, finding your tribe, and making it work for you. You can listen to the podcast here.

I’ve got a healthy respect for Scott’s work now that I’ve seen how much time, effort and support he puts in to the things he does.

If you haven’t heard Hanselminutes before, give it a try. There’s some great slices of developer life in there. And now I’m one of them.

]]>https://daphnechong.com/2016/09/05/my-podcast-with-scott-hanselman/feed/4daphnechongLessons learned in Public Speakinghttps://daphnechong.com/2016/08/09/lessons-learned-in-public-speaking/
https://daphnechong.com/2016/08/09/lessons-learned-in-public-speaking/#commentsTue, 09 Aug 2016 13:21:01 +0000http://daphnechong.com/?p=949Continue reading Lessons learned in Public Speaking]]>Every year, I try to learn something new. 2014 was javascript, 2015 was back to CS fundamentals, and 2016 is my Year Of Public Speaking.

I’ve been lucky to be able to present the same talk multiple times this year, which is an overview of the new video transcoding system we built at the ABC:

Internal presentation at the ABC (March)

Public presentation at ABC’s tech talk night (March)

YOW! Night talk in Brisbane (April)

YOW! Night talk in Melbourne (April)

YOW! West Conference in Perth (May)

YOW! Night talk in Sydney (May)

NDC Sydney (August)

Each time I presented it, something changed before I gave the next version. The talk has evolved a lot during these months, and I wanted to share some of the lessons I learned doing multiple renditions, and public speaking in general.

Invest time in your talk abstract

Put the time in to write your abstract well. it lives everywhere, it sells the talk before you arrive, it entices people to attend. It’s your advertising. Don’t neglect it. I wish I’d done mine better in early versions. I was pretty happy with the last one at NDC Sydney.

Show it to someone and ask for feedback. Would they attend your session? Does it accurately represent your talk?

Say less than you think you should

If you’ve done some research, then heed the advice you read everywhere: leave space to breathe, and say less. Craft your message around a central point and chop out the excess, no matter how interesting.

Humans are creatures of relativity; we forget how much we know about something, given that you’ve probably spent weeks, months, or even years on it.

The audience doesn’t have the benefit of those months or years of background understanding the topic like you do. They won’t absorb everything. Nor will you be able to cram everything from one year into one hour.

What’s the most important thing you want to say? Or the top 3 things? Select content to include to support your message, rather than selecting things to exclude. You’ll have a more coherent message, and the audience will feel less overwhelmed. Don’t be afraid to repeat things often.

Craft your story

Read some advice on how to construct a narrative, and tell a story. Don’t just list the facts – make it something they can get involved in.

There are a few story “archetypes” detailed in the TED Talks Official Guide to Public Speaking that I found useful. An example story archetype is introducing a challenge, and then unmasking step-by-step how you solved it. The audience gets to play along, and “solve” the challenge with you, which leads to more engagement.

Devote time to your slides

A well-designed slide set can support and reinforce your message in amazing ways. Great slides are really valuable. I believe they’re worth as much time as you can spare, and they can give you more confidence if you’re a newer (or nervous) public speaker. For example, you can use funny images to inject humour if you’re not normally great with joke delivery. The slides help you cheat. The better you are at public speaking, the less you need the slides as backup.

Here’s an example of using slides to reinforce your message. It’s much nicer to see these 3 slides in sequence, while you explain what’s happening – we take a watermark, make it 30% transparent, then resize it:

And here are the 3 separate slides:

Compare those visual ones to a text slide:

Sure, the second slide takes less work to create. But the first set of three look prettier. They easily convey your point, and nobody has to read text to digest it. If your audience understands what you’re saying – through word, or through visuals – then you’ve done your job well

Learn some public speaking techniques

Invest in some classes, read some books, or watch videos to learn about public speaking techniques.

This can include a training course, (I was lucky be part of YOW’s Women in Tech comp in 2015, and absolutely encourage you to enter if you are a woman in Australia), but I have also since done a course with Public Speaking For Life in Sydney, which focuses on more general delivery techniques. I found both very valuable, and PSL offer multiple courses throughout the year.

I highly recommend watching Damian Conway’s Instantly Better Presentations on how to deliver a good technical presentation. He specifically covers technical issues, like demonstrating code. His intensive public speaking courses are great.

Another great thing to do is to watch other people deliver talks, and see which ones you found compelling. What did they do to make you feel engaged?

Practice. Lots.

Although I ran through my hour long presentation multiple times, it’s way too much content to know off the bat. But the more I ran through it, the more comfortable I got with the content, and the less nervous I would feel on stage (this was the theory).

This Wait But Why article explains the science of different levels of memorisation (with graphs, and everything!) and is seriously entertaining to boot.

A few techniques I used to familiarise myself with the talk:

Recorded my voice rehearsing various sections, a) standing up and b) including intonations and pauses and then played it back to myself on the way to work, or at lunch.

Rehearsed in a similar position to the real talk – Standing up, not facing my computer, etc.

Bought a clicker and practiced with it.

Checked the speaker notes were visible, and easy to focus on.

Recorded myself to see if I should adjust anything with body language or gestures.

Got someone to watch me in practice, and welcomed their feedback. I did this multiple times.

My story

A few years ago, I’d never want to stand up in front of an audience and talk about something. I didn’t feel qualified enough, or interesting enough.

I’m really proud that I got to the stage of doing all those talks, and how they turned out. The talk feedback has been great, and it’s fun being a speaker. People are interested in what you have to say. You also get to be in situations you wouldn’t be otherwise, like chatting to Tess Ferrandez, whose debugging tutorials I used years ago.

However, the reality is that someone else always pushed me to try. Dave Thomas, who organises YOW, repeatedly encouraged the Women in Tech competition speakers to submit talks for proposals. Sam Newman told me I should submit to NDC Sydney.

My next goal? Submit a talk somewhere, and get it accepted, without someone pushing me to do it. And to get my fellow women in tech up and talking too.

]]>https://daphnechong.com/2016/08/09/lessons-learned-in-public-speaking/feed/3daphnechongoutput_vddsYswatermark-textPresenting at YOW! Nights in Aprilhttps://daphnechong.com/2016/03/17/presenting-at-yow-nights-in-april/
https://daphnechong.com/2016/03/17/presenting-at-yow-nights-in-april/#commentsThu, 17 Mar 2016 12:16:48 +0000http://daphnechong.com/?p=853Continue reading Presenting at YOW! Nights in April]]>Following on from last night’s presentation at the ABC on our new transcoding service, Metro (which went really well!) I’m excited to announce that I’ll be presenting the same content in Brisbane, Melbourne and Sydney, thanks to YOW!

Metro currently transcodes all the content for ABC iview and has successfully processed thousands of pieces of content since launch in December 2015. It’s built using Node.js, Go, FFmpeg and various AWS services such as queues, notifications, autoscaling groups, and a hosted database. If you’re curious to learn more, come along!

If you’d like a sneak peek, slides from last night’s presentation are underneath – but obviously it’s going to be much better in person

Hope to see you there!

]]>https://daphnechong.com/2016/03/17/presenting-at-yow-nights-in-april/feed/1daphnechong“Developer-esque” relationshttps://daphnechong.com/2016/03/12/developer-esque-relations/
https://daphnechong.com/2016/03/12/developer-esque-relations/#respondSat, 12 Mar 2016 01:25:30 +0000http://daphnechong.com/?p=729Continue reading “Developer-esque” relations]]>It’s not technically my official job, but I do some “developer-esque” relations for the ABC’s Digital Network division. I started doing it because I like it, and it’s been very educational.

To clarify, the phrase “developer relations” could be interpreted in a couple of ways:

Your company has products or services it sells, and you’re trying to help people in the community to make better use of them, to encourage new users, and to get an idea about future features that people are seeking. The end goal is to get more people using your product, and be happier while they’re doing so.

Your company is trying to be more open about the way it builds things, and to build some community. You’re sharing knowledge about your internal processes and decisions, mistakes you’ve made, and what’s coming up in the future. The end goal is to let people find out more about your environment, get people interested in the products you build, exchange ideas, and perhaps even entice some future employees to join you.

The ABC has some really interesting products that millions of people use daily. However, when it comes to who, how, or why we build those products, there is zero external visibility. If you were trying to find information about the ABC’s development team, there really wasn’t anything to see. In an age where almost every company has engineering blogs, talks at conferences or events, and has a community presence, we were falling desperately behind.

The lack of information correlates to a difficulty in attracting good candidates. When you have choices, why would you choose the place that you know the least about?

So the theory is that by sharing more, we hope to get more people in the door. I’m pretty excited to be part of that. If you are too, then please join us.

]]>https://daphnechong.com/2016/03/12/developer-esque-relations/feed/0daphnechongMetro: the ABC’s new Media Transcoding Pipelinehttps://daphnechong.com/2015/12/09/metro-the-abcs-new-media-transcoding-pipeline/
https://daphnechong.com/2015/12/09/metro-the-abcs-new-media-transcoding-pipeline/#commentsWed, 09 Dec 2015 11:30:14 +0000http://daphnechong.com/?p=468Continue reading Metro: the ABC’s new Media Transcoding Pipeline]]>In December last year, the ABC launched a new video encoding system called Metro (“Media Transcoder”), which converts various sources of media into a standardised format for iview.

It’s been a fantastic project for the ABC’s Digital Network division – we’ve built a cheap, scalable, cloud-based solution that we can customise to suit our specific needs.

Metro has been live for a month, successfully transcoding thousands of pieces of content. Here’s an overview of how it’s been designed and what it does.

Background

Our previous transcoding system had a fairly straightforward job: produce the same set of renditions for each piece of content it was given. Both input and output files were fairly standardised. The previous system was convenient, but there were some aspects we couldn’t customise, and we didn’t use its #1 proposition: on-demand transcoding. Most of the content the ABC publishes is available to us days in advance, so we just need to make sure that it’s transcoded before it’s scheduled for release online.

We calculated that we could replace the existing system for less than the previous system cost, and take advantage of AWS services and their scalability. Other systems like the BBC’s Video Factory have been successfully built using the same model. Writing our own system would allow us to start batching up jobs to process in bulk, or use different sized instances to help reduce costs in the long term.

Our first step was to replicate what the existing system did, but allow it to scale when needed, and shut down when there’s nothing to do.

The pipeline is coordinated by the “Orchestrator”, an API written in node.js that understands the sequence of steps, enqueues messages, talks to our database, and tracks where each job is in the system. It’s also responsible for scaling the number of transcoding boxes that are processing our content.

Each step in our pipeline is processed by a small, isolated program written in Golang (a “queue listener”), or a simple bash script that knows only about its piece of the pipeline.

We are able to deploy each piece independently, which allows us to make incremental changes to any of the queue listeners, or to the Orchestrator.

Interesting bits

Autoscaling the Transcoders

The transcoders are the most expensive part of our system. They’re the beefiest boxes in the architecture (higher CPU = faster transcode), and we run a variable number of them throughout the day, depending on how much content is queued.

Before a piece of content is uploaded, we check to see how many idle transcoders are available. If there are no spare transcoders, we decide how many new ones to start up based on the transcoding profile. Higher bitrate outputs get one transcoder each; lower bitrates and smaller files might share one transcoder over four renditions. Once we process everything in the queue, we shut down all the transcoders so that we’re not spending money keeping idle boxes running.

Here’s a snapshot of the runtime stats (in minutes) on boxes over a 4 hour window:

There’s definitely some optimisation we can do with our host runtime. In future, we’d like to optimise the running time of our transcoders so that they run for a full hour, to match Amazon’s billing cycle of one hour blocks. We’d also like to take advantage of Amazon’s spot instances – using cheaper computing time overnight to process jobs in bulk.

FFmpeg

FFmpeg is the transcoding software we use on our transcoders. It’s open source, well maintained, and has an impressive list of features. We’re using it to encode our content in various bitrates, resize content, and add watermarks. We create an AMI that includes a precompiled version of FFmpeg as well as our transcoder app, so that it’s ready to go when we spin up a new box.

There’s still a way to go before we’re using FFmpeg to its full extent. It’s capable of breaking a file into even chunks, which would make it perfect to farm out to multiple transcoders, and likely giving us even faster, consistent results every time. We can also get progress alerts and partial file download (e.g taking the audio track only, avoiding downloading a bunch of video information that you won’t use).

SQS Queues

We utilise SQS queues to keep our pipeline resilient. We’ve got different queues for various step in our system, and each queue has a small app monitoring it.

When a new message arrives, the app takes the message off the queue and starts working. If an error occurs, the app cancels its processing work and puts the message back at the head of the queue, so that another worker can pick it up.

If a message is retried a number of times without success, it ends up in a “Dead Letter Queue” for failed messages, and we get notified.

Things seem to be working well so far, but we’d like to change the queues so that consumers continually confirm they’re working on each message, rather than farming out the message and waiting until a timeout before another consumer can pick it up.

In Production

Metro has been transcoding for a month, and is doing well. Our orchestrator dashboard shows all of the jobs and renditions in progress:

And some of the work done by transcoders in a 4 hour window:

The Future

We have more features to add, such as extracting captions, using cheaper computing hardware in non-peak times, and building priority/non-priority pipelines so that content can be ready at appropriate times. Metro has been really interesting to build, much cheaper than our previous solution, and we can customise features to suit our needs. I’m really looking forward to where it goes next.

]]>https://daphnechong.com/2015/12/09/metro-the-abcs-new-media-transcoding-pipeline/feed/4daphnechongtranscodearchitectureec2_transcoders2orchestrator2-smalltranscode_chartClassy Codinghttps://daphnechong.com/2015/10/04/classy-coding/
https://daphnechong.com/2015/10/04/classy-coding/#respondSun, 04 Oct 2015 01:40:56 +0000http://daphnechong.com/?p=463]]>So, this happened yesterday: Classy Coding! It was one of Women Who Code’s October events with wine, cheese, pastries and a bunch of amazing women working on their own projects, just hanging out and saying hello.

This photo made my day

]]>https://daphnechong.com/2015/10/04/classy-coding/feed/0daphnechongClassy CodingDigital Network Hackathons at the ABChttps://daphnechong.com/2015/07/07/digital-network-hackathons-at-the-abc/
https://daphnechong.com/2015/07/07/digital-network-hackathons-at-the-abc/#commentsTue, 07 Jul 2015 08:33:11 +0000http://daphnechong.com/?p=387Continue reading Digital Network Hackathons at the ABC]]>This post probably needs a bit of context before we dive in: I’m a Senior Developer at the ABC, and I’ve been working there almost a year.

I get to work on products that people use day-to-day, which is great, but I’ve also had the chance to pour effort into things I believe are fantastic for a development team: driving the ABC’s involvement in GovHack 2015, efforts in diversity, and the best part… not just one, but two internal hackathons to drum up some inspiration and build communication links within the division.

On the roadmap is an ABC Development blog, with contributions from various developers in the team. Unfortunately it hasn’t got off the ground yet The blog would be perfect to talk about these hackathons, but since that space doesn’t exist yet, I’m doing so here.

Background

Earlier this year, the ABC was undergoing a restructure of all its digital teams into a single Digital Network division. With the restructure, we really wanted to help bring together separate teams – who often sit on separate floors, and rarely get to interact – around a fun event.

Our main aims were to introduce people to others, and foster new communities within the dev team. It was also a great chance to let people flex their creativity muscles, and build prototypes for future products or features.

Our Challenges

The ABC has a lot of developers with different technology backgrounds, and we wanted to ensure that everyone had a fair opportunity to join a team and build something that interested them.

We also have many colleagues who work interstate. Facilitating teams and introducing everyone to each other was a bit of a puzzle, especially since we wanted to have team formation and idea pitches done before the day.

We’d also never run a hackathon at the ABC before, so we were given the chance to run a small-scale version in March to help us prepare for a larger, two-day event in June.

The First Hackathon

This was a one-day event held at the ABC in Ultimo. We invited 20 people from ABC Innovation (later Digital Network) and gave them 6 hours to build anything they wanted.

Seven teams produced a variety of hacks, surprisingly all ABC related, and had their demos watched by an audience of around 60 staff.

We got a lot of great feedback:

People really enjoyed meeting and working with others they didn’t know

It was fun working on something different

It was great getting the chance to build something you’ve wanted to for a while

Showing off the hacks to an audience was satisfying

We also learned what to improve for next time:

Attendees needed more lead time so they could prepare an appropriate idea, research what data they’d need, and explore what technology they might use to build it

Including a wider range of staff such as product managers and more designers would produce more diverse hacks

All attendees would benefit from guidance for hack presentations, including sample slides

The biggest challenge was team formation, especially considering the next event included interstate staff

The Second Hackathon

Our second event was much larger, with around 70 people hacking over two days at the Powerhouse Museum, just down the road from the ABC – complete with Angry Birds and Minecraft.

Given more time to hack, and more time to prepare, there was a big improvement in the quality of the hacks compared to the first event. It was also great to have all the teams from interstate mingling together in the same room.

Our main feedback (aside from faster wifi!) was still around team formation: teams had to be composed of people who didn’t work together normally, and were capped at 4 people. If someone hadn’t found a team a week before the hackathon, they would be allocated at random. Given how dispersed people are physically, it favoured people who already worked on the same floor, or knew other people socially. So, there are still things we can improve with this process.

For more coverage of the second hackathon, there is a complete rundown of the day, including summaries of the projects, photos and winners available on Storify in reverse chronological order.

Looking forward to the next one!

]]>https://daphnechong.com/2015/07/07/digital-network-hackathons-at-the-abc/feed/1daphnechongIMG_8110IMG_8129IMG_20150305_100802IMG_9626IMG_9628IMG_9640My love of travel (and London)https://daphnechong.com/2015/06/13/my-love-of-travel-and-london/
https://daphnechong.com/2015/06/13/my-love-of-travel-and-london/#respondSat, 13 Jun 2015 10:45:15 +0000http://daphnechong.com/?p=380Continue reading My love of travel (and London)]]>For a blog that is supposed to be about coding, cake and travel, there has been zero talk of travel so far. Mostly because it’s hard to distill something so complex and meaningful to me down to a series of words.

I love travelling because you experience new things. You decide when you want that experience, and how much you’re comfortable spending on it, which means that a destination that’s two hours away by car can be just as meaningful as somewhere halfway across the world. New people, new foods, new vistas, new neighbourhoods and new languages present a different life that someone else gets the chance to live – and you could have it too. Change is good.

I love travelling because it helps you realise your true personality by challenging you. When you’re dropped in the middle of a foreign city, you don’t speak the language, you’re lost, and you’re trying desperately to do something before a deadline, it’s amazing to realise how resourceful you can be, and how you handle stressful situations.

I love travelling because it’s freeing. There’s no schedule, except for how much you choose to put on there – whether it’s 14 hours of sightseeing, soaking up a neighbourhood by living local, or taking six months out to explore at your own pace. Nobody knows you, so nobody has any expectations of how you behave. You’re free to do whatever you’d like to, whenever you’d like to.

Travel gave me my second home.

I visited London on a trip in my early twenties, and fell in love with it.

One year later, I decided to move halfway across the world and settled there. It was the best decision of my life. I loved the culture, people, buildings, history, transport system, and the variety and pace of life, and I let it all soak in to my skin.

Most importantly, living in such close proximity to so many different countries in Europe was an amazing opportunity for someone who grew up in Australia. Every long weekend in the British calendar was eagerly planned in advance – will it be France, Iceland or Norway this time? Hiking, sightseeing, or wine country? No matter the destination, everything seemed just two hours away, and so easy to do straight after work on a Friday evening.

I gorged myself silly on it, visiting around 20 countries while I lived there, and some – like France – over a dozen times in an 8 year period. I’d kick off spring in Munich, cycling through gardens, drinking steins and eating giant pretzels. Then head to Croatia in summer, cruising from island to stunning island, devouring gelato and lazing in the sunshine. Then Switzerland in autumn, hiking through the riot of foliage colours and breathing in the crisp air. Winter would be France, boarding down a mountain of snow.

I loved all of it, but I also enjoyed just being in London – the cozy pubs, delicious cheeses, Georgian houses and self-deprecating humour. And of course, the queuing. Living there was one giant, extended holiday where I grew up and learned things.

Travel gave me a chance to learn who I am.

I’ve taken three life breaks from my career to go travelling, without knowing when I would settle down and start working again. They add up to over two years of my life, and were completely worth it.

Those breaks have shaped my existence. They’ve given me time to think about what’s important to me, and to take steps to make sure I can pursue them. They’ve let me experience things that enrich me as a person, and make me eager to come back and learn more.

I realise that I like learning things – whether astronomy, technology, experimenting with startups, or how to make giant food. I know how few possessions I actually need, since I’ve managed out of a suitcase for 6 months. I know that beautiful landscapes rejuvenate me more than the bustle of a new city. And I am grateful for the fact that I can afford to travel, both with money and time.

Travel has given me some fantastic memories.

There’s an incredible list of things I’ve had the opportunity to do in the past ten years: driving over giant salt plains in Bolivia, visiting art galleries in Italy, tasting wine in Argentina, exploring Iceland with a car and a paper map, swimming with sea turtles in the Galapagos, gorging on pastries in France, staying in tree houses in Laos, sleeping under the desert stars in Jordan, hiking around glaciers in Chile, racing a dog-sled in Sweden, hiking the Inca Trail in Peru, exploring the amazing temples of Angkor Wat in Cambodia, photographing the wilderness of Scotland, partying until dawn in Barcelona, partying (slightly differently) in Amersterdam, marvelling at the opulence of the Moscow Metro, cooking up a storm in Vietnam, riding camels in Egypt, snowboarding powder in Japan, jumping around the USA like a kid in a candy store, and soaking up everything I possibly could in my surrogate hometown of London.

Moving overseas was the best thing I’ve ever done. It made me realise that anything you want to do is possible, if you decide to do it. It also made me realise how adaptable human beings are, and that generally things will work out okay if you are flexible and recognise opportunities when they appear. And you’ll have loads of fun in the meantime.

I found the draft of this post on my laptop, a year after I started it. I finished it on various planes and trains zipping around Europe, which I thought was apt. I miss you, London. x